Lillian Palmer, Mod Amish, and Behind the Wagon

• Artist: Lillian Palmer
• Song: “Swinging on the Moon” (from the CD Like a Lover)
• Heard By: Gonzalo Dremoniz, Normal Heights

Overall, it’s cookin’. It’s very tight and swingin’. It’s everything I like about “proper” jazz. The piano and guitar are phenomenal. The organ brought to mind the organist Jimmy Smith — very tight, very funky. I heard a little bit of Wes Montgomery or George Benson in the guitar. They don’t improvise on technical ability — they improvise on the “soul” part of jazz. I got a hint of Sarah Vaughan with her vocals. It’s almost like the phrasing of the notes are more important than the words that are coming out. It’s funny because when an instrumental sounds like a vocalist it impresses me, but here I’m impressed with the reverse side; her singing is almost like a saxophone or a clarinet.

• Artist: Mod Amish
• Song: “Fade” (from the CD No Use for Sunshine)
• Heard By: Carlos Angeles, Normal Heights

I kind of liked it, to tell you the truth. I liked the way it felt. They’d do a basic chord progression, but instead of hitting the chord I thought they were going to hit to resolve, they played a half step down or up. The vocals were almost soft, and then the music would come in hard again. Something about the way it was recorded…it didn’t draw me to the lyrics. Relative to what I would call “alternative” music, this is more alternative. It was guitar-driven. I could imagine hearing this song on 91X or 94.9. When it was playing, I was picturing someone putting on some sort of black-and-white artsy film — lowering the sound on the TV and maybe having this song play at a party.

• Artist: Behind the Wagon
• Song: “Drinking in the Morning” (from the CD The Bottle, God and the Ones Who Really Love You in the End)
• Heard By: Matt Rhodes, Normal Heights

I thought it was a good song. I liked the context of the song. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he’s still rockin’ on. It was a song about moving through life and how you’ve got to keep on truckin’. The only thing is, the end is kind of sudden when he says, “I’ll have another beer.” Is that really how you want to end a song? He says, “I’ve been doing this for 15 years,” but what is he doing now to get past that to make things better for himself? It’s got kind of that garage-rock sound. It’s got a good tempo. If you’re a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, it’s sort of what you’d hear if you walked into the Bronze [nightclub]. I’d give that song a seven out of ten.